Why is 'The Walking Dead' so popular?

Saturday

Oct 13, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Not a word is spoken during the first five minutes of the third season opener of "The Walking Dead" (9 p.m. Sunday on AMC, TV-14). Without giving too much away, the gang comes upon a house and secures the place by shooting a few undead in the head and bashing others with axes. While foraging for food, one man kills an owl and then begins to pluck it. That can't be a good omen. And just when folks start to relax, they're besieged by a small army of zombies and have to exit through the back door and escape in their vintage pickups, motorcycles and a shiny, product-placement worthy new car. (Seriously, look at that car! All-wheel drive comes in handy when running over the entrails of the undead.)

Not a word is spoken during the first five minutes of the third season opener of "The Walking Dead" (9 p.m. Sunday on AMC, TV-14). Without giving too much away, the gang comes upon a house and secures the place by shooting a few undead in the head and bashing others with axes. While foraging for food, one man kills an owl and then begins to pluck it. That can't be a good omen. And just when folks start to relax, they're besieged by a small army of zombies and have to exit through the back door and escape in their vintage pickups, motorcycles and a shiny, product-placement worthy new car. (Seriously, look at that car! All-wheel drive comes in handy when running over the entrails of the undead.)

This cinematically artful scene shows how unending warfare with brainless zombies in a grim wasteland tends to cut down on opportunities for meaningful conversation and witty banter.

Later, the gang commandeers a safe spot — within a prison, no less. Irony alert! There's a quiet moment complete with folk songs by the campfire. The scene reminds us of how much "Dead" resembles a classic big-screen Western — a tale of hardy pioneers looking for a promised land, making their way in a hostile wilderness beset by savages.

But in this 21st-century version, the good guys can slaughter their attackers without forcing viewers to worry about all that messy genocidal history. (Except, of course, if you start to think about the implications of equating Native Americans with rotting flesh and cannibalistic urges.) But given the amount of brain splattering going on here, thinking isn't exactly high on anybody's agenda.

"Dead" follows a television trend dating to at least "CSI" that uses special effects to entertain an increasingly desensitized audience with almost nonstop morbidity. The zombie-killing scenes take up at least a third of the action. In addition to being repetitive, they're unspeakably disgusting and violent in ways that make Brian De Palma's "Scarface" look like "Little House on the Prairie."

Pondering the meaning and popularity of such relentless carnage may inspire more sensitive viewers to want to bash in their own brains. Perhaps the show's never-ending noggin splattering is the only thing on television to compete with the lethal logic of first-person shooter video games, a form of entertainment that asks the player to become the slayer.

After you've spent hours, days and weeks of your life as a virtual assassin, I guess watching zombies being killed is a kind of palate cleanser. A chance to chill before reloading.

— At least the shuffling zombies on "The Walking Dead" don't have to sit through brain-dead sitcoms like "See Dad Run" (8 p.m. Sunday on Nickelodeon).

Scott Baio ("Happy Days") plays David Hobbs, the star of a hit TV show about America's favorite Dad. Retiring after a decade, he thinks he can golf and relax. But then his showbiz wife (Alanna Ubach, "Legally Blonde") resumes her role on a soap opera, leaving David to raise their three cute, precocious kids.

David's big problem is his inability to distinguish real memories from those of his TV character. Most comedies that employ a show-within-a-show concept contrast the differences between "real" life and showbiz fakery. "Dad" isn't that clever. And that's just the beginning of its problems.

— "American Horror House" (9 tonight on Syfy, TV-14) revisits the haunted sorority house theme and adds creepy new touches: a recurrent child's song, a flashback to bloody murder, a haunted violinist — actually, a haunted closet full of stringed instruments. And "Horror" has the most terrifying touch of all: Morgan Fairchild as the demented housemother!

— The aptly titled "Too Cute!" (8 tonight on Animal Planet) returns for a new season with eight episodes dedicated to animal "coming of age" stories. In other words, shameless clips of puppies and kittens, as well as mini pigs, hedgehogs, dwarf rabbits and a baby goat. Resistance is futile.

In addition to weekly dollops of adorableness, "Too Cute!" invites viewers to follow a 24-hour-a-day live Kitten Cam at animal.discovery.com/tv/too-cute-kittens/kitten-cam.

Office productivity is sure to plummet.

— AMC airs a marathon of "The Walking Dead" (10 a.m., r, TV-14) in anticipation of season three.

— Brody must improvise to eliminate a link to his secret activities on "Homeland" (10 p.m., Showtime, TV-MA).

A third-rate novelist (Joseph Cotten) arrives in postwar Vienna for a friend's (Orson Welles) funeral, only to discover that he's alive and at the center of an evil conspiracy in director Carol Reed's 1949 adaptation of Graham Greene's mystery "The Third Man" (8 p.m. Saturday, TCM). The popularity of this movie's theme music would make the zither a staple of easy listening for more than a decade to come.